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While a visually-pleasing website will draw visitors in, it’s the engaging, fascinating content that will keep them there. Content is more than blog posts; it’s a mixture of audio, graphic, video, and written information that represents your brand, informs of your offerings, and communicates with your visitors. High-quality content also increases the chances of prospects finding your website by improving the platform’s discoverability on the Internet’s search engines. Generic articles that don’t deliver value to visitors tend to rank lower on Google. They also run the risk of a high bounce rate with few returning website visitors. Neil Patel explains more about bounce rates and how to analyze them in his excellent article on Neil Patel Digital.

The Value of High-Quality Content

What’s deemed as high-quality content is subjective, but most will agree it is impeccably-written and well-researched information that cites sources and uses the most up-to-date facts available. It should perfectly capture your brand’s voice and provide prospects with the information they are looking for. Done well, content will drive a high volume of your target audience to your site.

Content should inform, delight, and persuade prospects to purchase the goods or services your company offers. Without content, you’re missing out on important sales opportunities. Research at intechnic.com shows that 52% of consumers say that blogs have impacted past purchase decisions while 42% of consumers use blogs and articles to help them make decisions about purchases. It’s not just B2C consumers that benefit from content. In fact, 60% of business decision-makers (B2B consumers) believe branded content helps them make better product decisions.

Content Planning Framework

To help build your content on your website, it’s good to start by knowing what kind of information your site will need. A useful framework for understanding what content you should be producing is the content marketing sales funnel. This process takes your website visitors on a step-by-step journey that converts them from a prospect to a loyal customer. It makes up part of your overall content strategy which defines how you manage the information on your site. For further reading on marketing planning, Hubspot provides a detailed breakdown of everything you need to know about content strategy.

The content marketing sales funnel is made up of four stages:

Awareness

Interest

Desire

Action

This is the ‘ideal’ process; the reality has several more loops, yet it’s still a good model to use to structure your content creation. Potential customers will require different information at each stage of the process. It’s your job to fill your site with valuable content for every step.

At the Awareness stage, the prospect isn’t looking to buy. Instead, they are searching for a solution to a problem or need they have. This is the stage where you make this prospect aware of your company and your industry expertise. You will want to provide blog posts between 500 and 1,500 words which can be your own content or provided by contributors, such as guest posts from other expert sites or from professional writers. You can also provide downloadable white papers, e-books, and webinars which visitors can access after signing up for free. Each blog post should talk about a specific problem and the solutions to that issue without actually mentioning your product or services just yet. To build content for the awareness stage, think about pain points your customers have and design titles centered on those problems. For tips on blogging, you may want to check out our article about the most common blogging mistakes and how to avoid them.

In the Interest stage, the prospect likes your company but isn’t ready to buy yet. You want to continue to inform them by adding educational content that relates directly to your products and how it can help them. The type of content you may want to include is product webinars, demo videos, case studies, and in-depth blog posts about how your product addresses their problems. Now is the time to talk about your products and showcase how perfectly apt they are to help your prospects.

In the Desire stage, the prospect is now ready to buy but is still perhaps undecided from where. This is the moment where you need content that encourages the prospect to contact you. This can include content such as product demonstrations, trial offers, proposals, and tailor-made emails. You could also develop custom-made emails to send those who signed up at the Awareness stage. According to epsilon.com, 80% of those surveyed are more likely to purchase from a company offering personalized experiences, such as emails and other content.

Finally, at the Action stage, the prospect wants to buy your goods and this is the moment where you need to support their decision, both before and after the sale. The content you will include is welcome emails, guidelines, implementation documents, and thank-you notes. This content should be highly personalized and can also take the form of blog posts, such as case studies of customers who use your product or service and can show how it has helped them. Later, you can request a testimonial from them to add to your customer reviews content on your site

Once you’ve decided on the types of content your site needs, the next step is to decide where to get content from, what topics to write about, and how often you should post.

Content Creation

While you should typically post on your social media pages daily, you don’t need to post every day on your website. Research from Hubspot says that companies that produce 16 posts or more every month had four times as much traffic as those that post four times or less. This means posting content once every two days is sufficient. That may still seem like a lot, but there are some ways to lessen the time burden.

One great tip is that you don’t always need to produce brand new content. In fact, you can recycle a lot of old content into different styles. For example, a blog post about SEO or keyword analytics can also be turned into a video, an infographic, and a podcast. This will help you reach a wider audience and saves the time of thinking up new ideas. If you don’t have time to produce your own content, then you can ask for guest posts from experts relating to your industry who may be willing to contribute in exchange for a link to their professional pages.

You can also invest in a professional writer who can produce high-quality content, which saves you time to manage the rest of your business. You can either give the writer the titles you want or they can pitch you different topics. To measure the return on investment, use your site’s statistics such as the volume of traffic and conversion rates to see how many sales and how much interest your content is generating. You can hire a writer with experience in SEO, which will help boost your site’s visibility. For more information on SEO, we suggest our guide to the importance of SEO for your website.

If you’re struggling to think of content titles, you can use tools such as the Hubspot blog ideas generator that will produce a list of possible titles based on your keyword input. You can also brainstorm topics that relate to your industry, problems your prospects may have that you can help with, and the advantages of your products as further ideas for content.

Uploading content every two days sounds time-consuming, yet it doesn’t have to be. You can actually mass-load content onto your site and schedule future publishing dates so they automatically self-publish on the day you want. You can do this weeks in advance so you have a steady stream of content programmed to publish over a period of time. You can do the same for your social media with social media scheduling tools, which helps save time and gets more content out there to your audience. Here are some of Sprout Social’s favorites for 2018.

Content is not only vitally important, but it’s also exciting to produce – after all, it’s the true mouthpiece of your brand and your company. At Komaya, we empower businesses with knowledge and support, allowing them to achieve all their online marketing goals. If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you.

Custom content marketing through blogging is the most popular and cost-effective way for a business to build their customer base. Taking the time to create new content for your blog enhances your brand’s visibility and product ROI (Return on Investment). Blogging makes a business more accessible and attracts more inbound traffic to a website. This can result in a return as high as triple the average rate for acquiring new leads, aka customers who are loyal to your brand. In short, blogging is the marketing wave of the present and future!

There’s always room to improve your marketing strategies as a blogger. It doesn’t matter if you’re totally new to the blogging world or if you’re a seasoned content writer. Technology is constantly evolving, so with that being said, you’ve come to the right place! Our team here at Komaya is ready to guide you in your journey to being the best blogger you can be. Here are 4 blogging mistakes that you might be making and how to correct them:

No Marketing Strategy

According to Neil Patel, only 9 percent of B2B marketers rate their organization as “very effective” at content marketing and that most people fail because they have no content marketing strategy. Take the time to learn more about the fundamentals and value of online marketing! DemandMetric.com provides a very thorough breakdown of the building blocks for content strategy and its potential consumer impact. Educate yourself, do the research, and seek opportunities to learn about online business in your community. By investing the time to learn now, you’ll be able to discover what methods work best for your brand with confidence in the future.

3 Key Statistics from DemandMetric.com:

Internet users are browsing brand-related content an average of 20% of the time.

Within that time frame, a staggering 68% of users are reading exclusively about brands that interest them!

Once exposed to a new brand, internet users are 60% more likely to research products they’ve learned about—you guessed it—from reading a blog!

Inconsistent Content

This issue remains prevalent among businesses across the board and negatively impacts bloggers regardless of a business’ marketing budget or years of experience. Even the most streamlined website isn’t working optimally if the blog section is outdated or altogether inactive. It’s not about a business’ money or credentials, it’s about consistency: take charge of your blog! Review past posts and assess what more successful posts (ones with interactions like comments, likes, or shares) might have in common. Try to emulate those tactics in future content. If you do post regularly, do you have a routine? If not, create a publishing schedule suited to your brand. Example: if you own a business in fashion, post a quick DIY every Monday at noon and a 3-point Q&A to spotlight a fashion entrepreneur of your choice every Friday at noon. At the end of each post, invite followers to suggest future DIY ideas, Q&A artists to spotlight, and what questions they’d like answered. For a step-by-step tutorial on how to create great content, we suggest Jeff Haden’s excellent article on Inc.com.

Bubble Blogging

It’s easy to fall into a rhythm of casualness when blogging, even for more experienced content writers. Of course, original and thoughtful content with eye-catching headlines and pins (the featured image for a blog post) always beats writing content for content’s sake. People who enjoy following blogs can always tell the difference, so burst that comfort bubble! It’s important to remember that a great blog is the online equivalent of a billboard for your brand.

The most definitive blogs out there create signature and engaging content that earns the loyalty and trust of their followers by appealing to them directly. Be authentic, be consistent, be patient, and know your audience! The blog is for them. For a comprehensive guide on copyright dos and don’ts, or if you just want a crash course on plagiarism and how to avoid it, visit HostingFacts.com and scroll to “Tools to Check Plagiarism…” We also highly recommend reading our blog post covering social media for further reading.

You’ve Got Mail?

Unfortunately, it’s a common misstep of new businesses to avoid creating a blog email subscription list while likewise trying to build their online presence through social media. Conversely, an active blog e-list is what the most successful businesses all have in common! A blog email subscription list is, bar none, the best way to enhance your brand’s visibility and draw more inbound traffic to your website, period. If your business is well established with a more advanced email subscription list, be sure to offer subscription preferences. It’s that added attention to detail that will keep your followers happy, guaranteed. When is the last time you reviewed your contacts to remove bounce-backs or double-checked contact information? Taking the time to stay up-to-date now will save you from having to backtrack in the future. If you’re brand new to blog email subscription lists, keep it simple. Stick to one weekly email blast or send an email blast per upcoming event. ShareThis provides some great tips for building a blog email subscription list right here if you’re looking for inspiration!

There may be countless resources at our fingertips, but it can be tricky determining which ones are the most reliable. At Komaya, our priority is to support and empower businesses in achieving their online marketing goals with knowledge and confidence! Never hesitate to reach out with thoughts or questions—just send us a message! We’re here to help.

https://www.komaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Blogging-Mistakes-That-You-Might-Be-Making.jpg247650Rose Saxenahttps://www.komaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Komaya-Logo-2018-4.pngRose Saxena2018-10-05 10:00:172018-10-04 17:54:28Blogging Mistakes That You Might Be Making

For many successful businesses, blogging is a key aspect of their marketing strategy. It is important to your business for a variety of reasons: It establishes you as an authority in your field, it lets your customers know about your products and services, it shows everyone who you (and your employees) are personally, and it also sets the tone for your business. Blogging can make or break you.

With that being said, here are some blogging mistakes you might be making:

Being scared to establish yourself as an authority — Blogging establishes you as an authority, and what that means is that it sets you up as an expert in your field. A lot of folks are scared to do this because they are waiting for someone to crown or bestow a title of expert on them but, most likely, that’s not going to happen. What makes you an authority is that you know more than at least one other person. A real estate agent, for example, might not be the best agent in the nation, but they probably know more about what happens at a closing table than the average person. If what you write could help one person learn more about your field, then you absolutely should write it!

Being overconfident and not backing up facts — The converse side to establishing yourself as an authority is proclaiming false facts. It’s totally fine to give examples of how you’ve done x, y, or z within your business or community, but remember—- what you write is accessible to everyone, forever, so make sure there’s truth in your claims. You can’t go wrong if you write from the heart on a topic you know about.

Having an inappropriate tone for your business — Blogging should be extremely casual, but the tone should fluctuate depending on what you’re talking about, your audience, and what you’re trying to do. If you’re talking about your political campaign, the rules for your employees to follow, or the legalities of filing a lawsuit, perhaps you should have a more formal tone. However, if you’re trying to target millennials and you’d like to sell clothing— you don’t necessarily need to do a research article on cotton and rayon fibers with references. Similarly, if your spelling and grammar are poor and you’re using slang within “ur” writing— that won’t really go far for a professional piece on the benefits of your business.

Not giving enough information — Blogging is casual, but there is an extremely fine line that needs to be walked. Readers respond better to pieces that are written on a lower reading level in a casual tone. They also want to feel as if they’re in your shoes or experiencing what you’re talking about first hand. So, while you shouldn’t over-explain everything, you should also remember that most of your readers are strangers who don’t know anything about your business, and they don’t get nicknames, inside jokes, or industry terms.

Not posting enough — Above all, the worst blogging mistake that you can make is not to blog! Jot down a bunch of ideas that you’d like to talk about and start writing one a week until you get on some kind of blogging routine. Many can get intimidated by not being professional writers, but that’s not what it’s about— it’s about sharing your ideas and your business with the world. Even if it’s 100 words here or there, it’s something, and that’s way better than having a page that hasn’t been updated since 1999. Worst case scenario, talk to us, and we can arrange for you to hire someone to blog for you.